(Part 3) Best christian faith books according to redditors
We found 875 Reddit comments discussing the best christian faith books. We ranked the 166 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
48. Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God
2 mentions
Becoming the woman God wants me to be.
If you're not getting it, I am.
New Evidence that Demands a Verdict
More Than a Carpenter
Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels On my to read list.
Faith on Trial: An Attorney Analyzes the Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus
The Case for Christ
The Case for Faith
The Case for a Creator
The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus On my to read list.
The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ On my to read list.
Besides the apologetics books, you can watch John Lennox on YouTube. He is a very well-spoken and kind (doesn't attack the other debater) debater. Very well thought out responses. The Dawkins vs Lennox debate was awesome! Ditto Gary Habermas as well.
Hey... so it's 2 in the morning where I am (and I've been procrastinating for a while now), but I'ma gonna ramble at you for a bit. Cool? Good. Context: I'm 20 (m), and have gone through decently similar stuff.
First off, I'm not convinced that there is anything such as "normal" in a human context - we are all weird.
Also, if you're going to school, chances are you have access to a cheap/free therapist. Take advantage of that. I don't think there's anything "broken" about someone because they are seeking help.
... alright, I'm finding this really difficult to articulate, but what I think you're experiencing is this: you don't realize that you have power affect yourself or your corner of reality. I don't mean that you don't realize that there are consequences to your actions; you're an intelligent person, you know that. What I do mean is that (perhaps) you don't realize the authorship you have in your life.
Where does your motivation originate from? Why are you pursuing psychiatry? Who initiated the majority of stuff in your recently-ended relationship? (btw - that shit can hurt more than you realize, even if you're the one who ended it).
Goddamnit, I'm not making my point very well. I don't even know exactly what my point is, but I'm going to keep talking in the hopes that you might just find something beneficial.
Just getting older doesn't mean that things will get better, or that your problems will go away by themselves. One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn is that I have to fucking do something in order for my shit to resolve.
And no. You aren't alone. You aren't exactly like anyone else, either, but more people experience stuff than you may realize. ...
More random shit: This post describes a perspective on the universe that helps inform who I am. This book provides some useful ideas, like that happiness is more dependent on how you think, rather than upon how you feel. You can control your emotions, or at least process them more appropriately (metacognition!).
Do stuff on impulse. Realize that the opposite gender is human too. Realize that you're more powerful than you've known. Have experiences. Be available to people! Say "yes," even when it's inconvenient - or don't. Find places of silence, and try and get a feel for who you are, not simply the experiences you've had. Realize that you can change, even when it feels like you're sinking in concrete. Really listen to people. Think critically and sometimes disagree with rambling douches like myself. Find moments that inspire the hell out of you (like this video for me), and then dwell in those moments without worrying what it'll feel like when they pass. Turn in a shit assignment to a professor you don't care for, just to show yourself that you can without the world collapsing. Stop and pause when you feel like it.
Realize that failure is an option. You aren't stupid if you fail, you're learning. You CAN get better at stuff, even if you don't have a natural talent for it.
Alright, I think it's time for this wall of text to come to an end. Just so you know, I've been processing some of this stuff pretty recently, and by no means do I follow all of my own advice even half the time. Its shit I want to change in my life, and I get pretty frustrated sometimes. But, that's okay.
TL;DR: You can make your life your own. Or something.
Edit: Holy shit, I wrote a bunch. Sorry 'bout that.
Also, I forgot one of my favorite quotes: "We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking." It's from here.
Related
this is like a primer on queer theology and how it developed.
here is a book specifically about trans christians.
Marcus Borg's book Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power - And How They Can Be Restored. Many atheist/theist arguments are really semantic in nature, and Borg does an excellent job explaining how the language of Christianity has become distorted.
Paul Tillich's classic, Dynamics of Faith. Relatively short and accessible, in this book Tillich discusses how an intelligent, rational person can also be religious. Here's a key quote on literalism:
>The resistance against demythologization expresses itself in literalism. The symbols and myths are understood in their immediate meaning. The material, taken from nature and history, is used in its proper sense. The character of the symbol to point beyond itself to something else is disregarded. Creation is taken as a magic act which happened once upon a time. The fall of Adam is localized on a special geographical point and attributed to a human individual. The virgin birth of the Messiah is understood in biological terms, resurrection and ascension as physical events, the second coming of Christ as a telluric, or cosmic, catastrophe. The presupposition of such literalism is that God is a being, acting in time and space, dwelling in a special place, affecting the course of events and being affected by them like any other being in the universe. Literalism deprives God of his ultimacy and, religiously speaking, of his majesty. It draws him down to the level of that which is not ultimate, the finite and conditional.
If you really wanna poke the bear, carry a copy of the book "The Queer God" http://www.amazon.com/The-Queer-God-Marcella-Althaus-Reid/dp/041532324X That'll show 'em.
You are not alone. I’ve gone through the same thing, and these are some books that helped me, from people who also went through periods of serious doubt.
Faith Unraveled, by Rachel Held Evans
The Sin of Certainty, by Peter Enns
Rachel, in particular, was super helpful for me.
Masculine Mandate by Richard D Phillips
Manhood Restored by Eric Msaon
Family Shepherds and Family Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham
Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp
>What I want to know is if there is a book that guides through various books of the bible "how to read this book in a queer way."
That is a great question. I haven't read such a book yet. One resource that I've used is Queer Theology's podcast, "Reading Queerly," which takes a look at one of the week's lectionary reading through a queer lens. I'm familiar with the *Queer Bible Commentary**, but it's a little pricey for me. I actually just received in the mail Austen Hartke's Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians, which may be helpful for some people.
A "queer" reading of a text -- or "queering" a text -- is a hard thing to pin down. Queer theory is all about the difficulty in pinning down, well, anything! It concerns itself with the margins, and as the margins change, what is "queer" changes as well.
My go-to intro to queer theology is Patrick Cheng's Radical Love. He talks about how Christianity is queer, because it blurs those boundaries between, e.g. God and man, transcendence and immanence, fallenness and salvation, etc.
>I mean, its one thing to say, "David and Jonathan! David and Jonathan!" But its another to see Jesus being uncloseted about being God and then put to death by state apparatus in Mark.
This is a great question, and I'm not quite sure what to say other than definitionally (again, fraught in this context) queer theory, in general, has to do with what I discussed above, but it somehow especially has to do with that in the context of sex, gender and sexuality.
Take Marcella Althaus-Reid (in The Queer God, who -- and this is related to your question as well -- combines post-colonial theory and queer theory to queer the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, relating it to the destruction of indigenous cities and sexual practices during the conquista. At a first glance, that sorta offends my sensibilities for a high view of Scripture. So yeah, your last questions come to mind:
>What makes a real queer reading? How does one tell that a reading is a fake queer reading?
Edit: Oh, and one of the best things I've ever watched about queering the Bible is Peterson Toscano's film, "Transfigurations", which is on Amazon video (unfortunately not Prime), if you have an hour and a few bucks to spare.
I'm working from memory here, and it's been a while since I've read some of these, so please bear with me.
I also recommend The Basement Tapes by RC Sproul Jr and others. They are wide-ranging and helped me establish a vision for my own family. They're on like 140-something and I only got through the first 40 (for various uninteresting reasons). Highlands Ministries also does Salt Talks which I haven't listened to, but assume they are similar.
First of all, I applaud your courage to seek the truth even if it leads you to a place that requires humility. God loves you and is clearly drawing you to himself! The word "faith" in the New Testament means "to be pursuaded by God." He is the one creating the desire and belief in you even as it develops, how cool is that?
Now, in reply to your comment, a lot of people have differing opinions of exactly what a "literal" interpretation even means. My best explanation would be to say that everything that the Bible says happened, actually happened, exactly as it says... regardless of whether the author of the passage actually meant for it to be taken literally.
A simple example:
Most of Jesus' teaching is through parables, or stories that have representative meaning. Sometimes he begins them "Suppose a woman has ten silver coins..." but sometimes he begins them like "There was a man who had two sons." Now, in my view, a literal interpretation of Jesus' teaching would be that this man and his sons actually existed, because of how he phrases it. But there is good reason to believe Jesus is making up this story to illustrate a point, and this would be generally understood by his audience, much like beginning a story "once upon a time" indicates that this is fiction, even though your literal words are saying that this story happened. Think about most fiction you read; rarely if ever does it explicitly state that it is fiction -- usually it just says this stuff happened and you are supposed to understand that it didn't.
So... there are parts of the Bible that are believed by many Bible scholars to have been written with the intent of teaching a principle but not to be a literal, historical record of fact. There are MORE parts of the Bible that are certainly standard written histories, and many of these stories have fantastic and miraculous elements. So I am not saying that you can't take the Bible at face value, because most of it is absolutely meant to be read that way.
But there are parts that are written about the beginning of the world, and for reasons I won't get into explaining here (you can research if you're interested), many who know this stuff better than you or I ever will are convinced that they were written to illustrate the truth that God is the creator of everything, but not written to describe exactly what his specific method and timeline was for creating. Similarly, there are visions people have of their future which are written in an extremely metaphorical way, much like dreams represent true ideas but not literal ones. When I dream of my teeth falling out, it means I'm stressed about something, but not specifically about my teeth falling out. So many of these predictions were not thought to be literal representations even by the people who had the visions or made the predictions.
The good news for you, as a person investigating faith, is that these interpretations do not really have to have significant impact on your journey at the moment. Your focus should be on the love of God for humanity, and the (historically factual/literal) accounts of Jesus' life in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Get to know God and spend time reading the Bible, with the Holy Spirit guiding you, before you draw your line in the sand about what kind of interpretation you insist on being correct. That would be like me placing a million dollar bet on a baseball team to win the world series before I'd ever even seen a baseball game.
You have been given some good book recommendations already. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis is an extraordinary book that spends a fair amount of time just pondering logically the likelihood that God exists at all. It gets more specifically into Christianity later in the book.
There are also two books by pastor Timothy Keller that you may enjoy: Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical and The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. These again are more about the arguments for and against God's existence which you may or may not need at this point in your journey.
But of course, the most important of all is simply the Bible. The Gospel of Mark may be a good place to start because it is a historical record of Jesus' life written for the Romans, and therefore explains a lot about the Jewish customs that they would not have understood. But any of the four gospels are a wonderful place to begin.
Enjoy your journey, and I encourage you to take that leap of faith and ask God to show you the truth, even if you are not yet sure he even exists. I would pray such a prayer every day, or every time you begin reading anything about God. He is already drawing you to himself but prayer is a practice that brings our wills into alignment with his, and so when we pray for things that he already wants to do, he tends to show up even more significantly so your faith will grow.
https://www.reasonablefaith.org
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-1
https://www.amazon.com/Guard-Students-Thinkers-Guide-Christian-ebook/dp/B00U894IGA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1519486559&sr=8-3&keywords=on+guard+william+lane+craig
https://www.amazon.com/Case-Creator-Student-Journalist-Investigates-ebook/dp/B000SERW7M/ref=la_B001H6KH8G_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519528650&sr=1-3
https://www.amazon.com/Case-Christ-Journalists-Personal-Investigation-ebook/dp/B01863JLK2/ref=la_B001H6KH8G_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519528650&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/Case-Faith-Journalist-Investigates-Christianity-ebook/dp/B000FC2KEW/ref=la_B001H6KH8G_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519528650&sr=1-2
https://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-Lewis-Signature-Classics-ebook/dp/B002BD2UR0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519528882&sr=8-1&keywords=mere+christianity
Have you done much investigation into the reasoning of Christianity? I'd recommend that every skeptic read Making Sense of God, by Tim Keller.
As a Christian, it's insane how many people I encounter with powerful, verifiably true testimonies about how they tried everything to beat an addiction and failed, came to Christ, and were instantly healed. And they all describe it in the same way - they didn't think "Well I'm a Christian now. I guess I need to be better." Rather, It was like the next day they simply didn't have the desire to do the thing they were addicted to for years. They saw the thing differently overnight, as if something inside them pertaining to that issue had changed.
I honestly believe that God delivered me from pornography in the same way.
There is so much power in the truth of Christianity, so many skeptical atheists whose entire lives were turned around. And it's been going on for two millenia.
If Christ's promise sounds good to you, and if you recognize your own brokenness and inability to change yourself though you wish you could, and that the only thing holding you back is that you are unconvinced by the logic or evidence, then I absolutely recommend you check out that book.
You can be a doubting, rational skeptic, and also believe in God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The two do not contradict.
I found the book “Not enough faith to be an atheist” to be a very good source of forming up foundations.
https://www.amazon.com/Enough-Faith-Atheist-Foreword-Limbaugh-ebook/dp/B0029RJ7D8
Not unknowingly. Grandma has been reading Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters
http://www.amazon.com/Atheism-Reader-S-T-Joshi/dp/1573928550
Living in a Southern state, I find it difficult when the LGBT section of the library or the bookstore, when there is one, is two shelves of porn and one shelf of lifestyle subject matter. I can expect 1/3rd to 1/2 of what's not porn to be devoted to gay men and coming out, or just coming out stories.
While that is important, it's frustrating because I rarely find books supporting bi, trans, or genderqueer people. I may get lucky and find a history book of the lgbt rights movement. I was amazed when I found a book about Bi men for sale; just about everything else about our culture seems to imply that bi men just don't exist.
But one of the most aggravating problems about being lgbt in the South, and there are many, is the complete lack of resources for religious lgbt people. For many, coming out also means completely rejecting their faith since it will not support them; and this makes it harder to come out in heavily-religious areas. We just don't find books and resources to show that faith and lgbt life can function hand-in-hand. Instead we have families that kick their children to the street because they're "goin' to the Devil."
Soulforce.org has a really useful campaign where they address some of these religious issues and they have several pamphlets for coming out in very religious households; they have arguments backed up with Biblical passages explaining what the Bible actually has to say about homosexuality.
Some interesting books include:
Sorry if my book list is a little dated; if anyone has any more books to suggest, I would be interested in reading them.
I'm enjoying I Believe in Love: A Personal Retreat Based on the Teachings of St. Therese of Lisieux. Introduction to the Devout life by St. Francis De Sales is a classic and I see recommended often. I've noticed that a lot of the Saints have a great devotion to the Eucharist, our Blessed Mother, and a deep unceasing prayer life. There's different books that focuses specifically on those topics. What I love about Catholicism is you're like a little kid in a giant library in the amount of material and wisdom you can learn from. Make sure to build good sustainable habits and stick with them even in difficult days. Once you get those hard days done with, it makes all the other days easier.
> The more seriously credentialed creationists tend to speak over the heads of their target audience, unfortunately, which also leads to them getting less attention
Agreed, though some of us prefer not to have our science watered down, I'm sure you agree. :)
> The creationist movement loves themselves a strong firebrand
Agreed again, but to be fair this is a general human trait: e.g., Richard Dawkins is an oft-adored shock jock among atheists even as he produces awful arguments that more intelligent atheists find laughable.
> real science isn't done by preaching to the faithful, it begins with no one believing
You're referring to Methodological Naturalism, yes? So there's an interesting book Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology (Eta Linnemann) that actually offers a critique of that idea: in a nutshell, if Christianity is true, we are putting on a blindfold by ignoring what Scripture states, essentially saying, "yeah dad, I hear what you're saying, but I'm not gonna listen because I wanna figure this out on my own," which in terms of software search algorithms, results in a lot of inefficiency due to lack of pruning. The problem, of course, is if we misinterpret the text and try to read too much into it, and prune where we ought not to. Thus any pruning has got to be done with the utmost diligence, honesty, and care.
The above idea of pruning based on God's Word would obviously be rejected by anyone who denies inerrancy, so I'm not expecting you to agree, just wanted to share the line of thinking with you.
> The problem with both Todd Wood and Kurt Wise is that they argue quite heavily from the concept of inerrant scripture
Have you read any of Todd Wood's essays in The Fool and the Heretic where he goes into wonderful detail about why it's necessary to start with inerrancy of God's Word? What about this really good blog post by Ron Garret on the subject?
As far as i know the reason there are no comparisons of the practices is because what Jesus taught to his close disciples has been lost or never made it very far beyond that circle. The highest practices in his teachings would have to be the same or very similar to those in the East. But it's not what you do that is nearly important as how you do it.
Look to those who found Christ personally like St Fancis, or St Teresa of Avila. If you read Avila's book, the Interior Castle and also understand the deeper teachings of yoga, you will find they are the exact same thing. But without a deep personal understanding of at least one side of the comparison, you'll be lost, because the language and cultures are so different.
Another option would be to read The Second Coming of Christ, by Yogananda The whole idea of this great work is to show the unity of Christ' teachings and the teachings of the East.
If anyone could right about this with authority it would be Yogananda.
I think it's reckless to begin acting married without having a ceremony, but only because it's too easy to make important decisions carelessly that way. Any ancient society would consider you to be married already.
> Edit: I also take issue with a lot of the stories in the old testament. How much is allegorical, how much am I supposed to believe?
It's very western, very modern, to think that "allegorical" means "false" or "irrelevant" or whatnot. But the Old Testament was not written in America in 1997. I challenge you to hang out with some Iroquois and then ask them if the Great Peacemaker's grandmother really tried to drown him, or if you're not supposed to believe that.
> How can God seem so cruel in the OT and yet be presented as a loving, just deity? How is it just to send religious non-Christians to hell if they are 100% convicted in their faith, and they truly believe they're in the right?
My favorite book on this stuff is Faith Unraveled. Following Jesus doesn't mean trying to wave these questions away. I'd be happy to send a copy to the pair of you as a wedding gift... for that matter, lots of stuff RHE blogs might ring true with you.
God bless you! I pray you'll have many happy decades together, and I pray that the rift between your husband and God will be healed. It's easy to be distracted by the way Christians screw up Christianity, but Jesus Christ is still here.
> The more seriously credentialed creationists tend to speak over the heads of their target audience, unfortunately, which also leads to them getting less attention
Agreed, though some of us prefer not to have our science watered down, I'm sure you agree. :)
> The creationist movement loves themselves a strong firebrand
Agreed again, but to be fair this is a general human trait: e.g., Richard Dawkins is an oft-adored shock jock among atheists even as he produces awful arguments that more intelligent atheists find laughable.
> real science isn't done by preaching to the faithful, it begins with no one believing
You're referring to Methodological Naturalism, yes? So there's an interesting book Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology (Eta Linnemann) that actually offers a critique of that idea: in a nutshell, if Christianity is true, we are putting on a blindfold by ignoring what Scripture states, essentially saying, "yeah dad, I hear what you're saying, but I'm not gonna listen because I wanna figure this out on my own," which in terms of software search algorithms, results in a lot of inefficiency due to lack of pruning. The problem, of course, is if we misinterpret the text and try to read too much into it, and prune where we ought not to. Thus any pruning has got to be done with the utmost diligence, honesty, and care. This would obviously be rejected by anyone who denies inerrancy, so I'm not expecting you to agree, just wanted to share the line of thinking with you.
> The problem with both Todd Wood and Kurt Wise is that they argue quite heavily from the concept of inerrant scripture
Have you read any of Todd Wood's essays in The Fool and the Heretic where he goes into wonderful detail about why it's necessary to start with inerrancy of God's Word? What about [this really good blog post by Ron Garret] on the subject?
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Posted by: N***g
Start here:
Gospel of Thomas doesn't have to be cannon. Who decided what is and is not cannon? A roman emperor 1700 years ago did. Why do you delegate your decisions to other people instead of reading and coming to your own conclusions?
Also, I think your interpretation of "hell" is not what is depicted in the Bible. I highly suggest you go and read the source materials yourself and come to your own conclusions vs just assuming someone else's translation. Also, if you are really interested in how someone of an Eastern mindset translates the 4 gospels, this book set by Paramahansa Yogananda is his interpretation. I don't agree with everything he says in here, but for someone new to the idea that Judeo-Christianity is in fact a non-dual religion this book set is a very good introductory: https://www.amazon.com/Second-Coming-Christ-Resurrection-Self-Realization/dp/0876125550/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=second+coming+of+christ&qid=1574436347&sr=8-2
I def recommend The Sibyl by Par Lagerkvist. And both The Courage to Be and The Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich. Also for Christianity, On Free Choice of the Will, by Augustine is great.
Contemporary continental philosophy is really Hegelian, so sadly you basically have to read the Phenomenology of Spirit, even though in school no one really reads it they just pretend to.
In general, my advice for philosophy is to find good secondary sources, and use those as you read the main material. For example, Being and Time is so hard to understand, but there's a book called Heidegger and the Question of Time by Francoise Dastur, which makes it a lot easier. The trick is finding reliable secondary scholarship.
As /u/Kdjsins points out, this deviates a bit from the original question. If you are genuinely interested, I would recommend Lee Strobel's 'Case For Faith' or C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity" for a more philosophical perspective.
There is empirical evidence for many faith systems. For example, there is excellent evidence that Buddhism is very beneficial in Palliative Care, because of their understanding of suffering. Likewise, there was a universal belief that Hittites were not a people group and this comprised evidence for the lack of historicity of the Old Testament, until the last century when other documents were found and archeological digs discovered an entire Hittite city. Finding like this (and there are many) are a great point of evidence for the Bible being a historically reliable document.
I am not saying that faith cannot be unfounded, I am saying it is not necessarily unfounded, and in the case of Christianity specifically, it is definitely not unfounded. You can dispute the evidence and any reasoning person should, but you can't deny its existence.
Redemptoris Missio - This encyclical kick started my passion for evangelization. St. JP2, 'nuff said
Forming Intentional Disciples - I truly believe that this book is going to transform the way parishes and individuals approach their methods of evangelization.
Evangelical Catholicism - This book gave me the most comprehensive vision for how the popes of the 20th century began a movement that will fully take root in 21st century Catholicism. It challenged the way I express my faith and provided a vision for priesthood and married life that affects the world by living lives radically transformed by Christ.
Evangelii Gaudium - Pope Francis rounds out my essential texts on Catholics living lives that evangelize. He gives a compelling vision for how our Catholic witness starts with an encounter with Christ, that leads to a profound joy and requires us to reach out to others.
I Believe In Love - This book was my introduction to St Therese. The series of reflections reinvigorated my prayer life, introduced me to Mary, and inspired my attention to Christ being present in my daily life.
Catholicism - This is my go to book when people ask me for an introduction to Catholicism. Fr Barron gives a phenomenal explanation of how the Church is not an organization of rules, but rather a living, breathing witness of Christ.
Atheism - A Reader
Quick read.
Please, by all means, if you feel led, talk to your teacher. That doesn't mean it'll turn into a debate, and it shouldn't be one, but just a conversation. Also, what you brought up about her question to her Christian friend, that is even more of a reason to talk to her, because she's surrounded by confused Christians. Not to go down a rabbit trail, but according to 1 Corinthians 7:14, children are considered Holy, and it is only until they reach the age of being accountable in their faith can there be the possibility of them going to Hell. When you do talk to her, just be honest if you don't know something. Trying to come across knowing all things hurts your witness. At the same time, don't let the feeling of not being knowledgeable enough of the Bible keep you from speaking to her. Confidence in your faith alone speaks great volumes.
One other thing, if you'd like to be able to answer those hard questions, The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel is a really good resource. I highly suggest it. I'll be praying God will give you the wisdom to know how to handle the situation, and that his spirit will speak through you if you talk with your teacher.
Duuude it's DC too!! That's wild. I had this one in my room as a kid!!!
It was actually a REALLY decent book from what I remember too, the 90s Marvel comic style has always been my absolute favorite time for comics, and it worked so well!!
I once read a graphic novel version of The Pilgrim's Progress, it was pretty encouraging.
https://www.amazon.com/Pilgrims-Progress-Christian-Classics/dp/0840769784
I think the point maybe that he's already accepted you!
But apart from that I would recommend n.t. scholar N. T. Wright's book, The challenge of Jesus.
http://www.amazon.com/Challenge-Jesus-Rediscovering-Who-Was/dp/0830822003
Check this place out Taize. Christianity can be a wisdom tradition, also one of my favorite books Living Buddha, Living Christ, or if you want it from a Christian's perspective Everything Belongs
Maybe you should try reading this, first. http://www.amazon.com/Land-Believers-Outsiders-Extraordinary-Evangelical/dp/0805083375
Proof?
I nice intro I've read was PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace.